Brooklyn’s Buying Bang

The Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office and the NYPD are shopping for guns. They’re offering $200 to anyone willing to surrender a working firearm; $20 for BB guns and air rifles. The weapons may be turned in at six local churches but curiously, there’s a maximum payout limit of only three guns per person. This makes no sense. If the idea is to remove guns from the streets, should it matter whether someone is looking to sell 3 or 300? Another problem for our government in buying guns is the New York City black market. It’s a shrewd competitor that typically pays out more for guns than we do.

Guns Gone AWOL

According to City Comptroller William Thompson, “an alarming number” of guns and rifles seized in crimes regularly disappear from the NYPD, at least for awhile anyway. Recently, 94 (29%) of 325 weapons were reported missing. Most were eventually found but should they ever have been lost? Thompson takes shots at the police department’s poor records system. In response, the NYPD said it’s purchasing a $28 million record system to better handle this problem. Will the City Comptroller likewise raise an issue about the high cost of this computer system??? Even a part-time employee with a handheld computer could do a better job, don't you think?